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For Immediate Release:
April 25, 2022
CONTACT: Michael Beyer, [email protected], 504-307-7154

ROUNDUP: Trump’s Vance Endorsement “Escalated The Tension And Nastiness” As GOP Voters Vow Not To Support Vance

Columbus, OH — Donald Trump’s endorsement of U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance has “escalated the tension and nastiness” in the Ohio GOP Senate primary. Instead of uniting the party, Trump has only created more vicious infighting with a week left in the primary.

Read more: 

NBC News: Trump’s J.D. Vance endorsement breeds more chaos in Ohio’s GOP Senate primary
Henry Gomez
April 23, 2022

• …it’s clear [Trump] has shaken up what was already the nation’s most chaotic and expensive Senate race in ways that no one — not Vance, not his supporters or his opponents — expected.
• Rather than clearing the field or creating a unified front of GOP support for Vance, Trump’s endorsement has escalated the tension and nastiness that from the start have served as the race’s hallmarks.
• In a letter to the former president this week, several pro-Trump activists in Ohio, including one of his 2016 state directors, called the endorsement a “betrayal,” citing Vance’s past attacks on Trump and his lack of relationships with the party’s grassroots leaders. Until his Senate bid, Vance was known primarily for “Hillbilly Elegy,” his memoir-turned-Netflix movie, and for his ties to Republican mega-donor and tech executive Peter Thiel.
• “I’m livid,” said Ralph King, a 2016 convention delegate for Trump who helped organize the letter. “This endorsement reeks of the swamp. Donald Trump is selling us out.”
• The Club for Growth, a conservative group that supports the early front-runner Josh Mandel but had been friendly with Trump, announced it would continue airing a TV ad that emphasizes Vance’s past criticisms. Trump Jr. retaliated on Twitter by branding Mandel as “establishment,” in part because he supported 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, whom Trump also endorsed that year. Those involved in the race are preparing for more pointed attacks on Mandel from Trump at Saturday’s rally, or from Trump Jr., who is scheduled to campaign with Vance again next week.
• A source close to Trump Jr. who requested anonymity to discuss strategy said that Dave McIntosh, the Club for Growth president, “didn’t do Josh Mandel any favors” with its endorsement.
• “Instead of just trying to push J.D. across the finish line, Don is going to do everything in his power to cut Mandel to pieces.”
• The senior Trump also threatened legal action this week against Winning for Women Action, a PAC that supports Jane Timken and has emphasized her close ties to the former president. A recent ad from the PAC features footage of Trump and Timken embracing, with a narrator telling of how Trump “turned to Jane Timken” when he needed a “conservative fighter” — a reference to her successful 2017 campaign for Ohio GOP chair. In a cease-and-desist letter, Trump’s team asserted that the ad “implies” a Senate race endorsement.

Cleveland.com: Not everyone’s convinced Trump’s nod to J.D. Vance in Ohio’s GOP Senate primary makes the race a layup
Andrew Tobias and Seth Richardson
April 24, 2022

• But it’s also ruffled some feathers, particularly among the more engaged Republicans at the county party and grassroots activist level.
• “A lot of them aren’t happy, to be honest with you,” said Bob Frantz, a longtime conservative talk radio show host in the Cleveland area. 
• Dave Johnson, the influential chairman of the Columbiana County Republican Party, said the last-minute endorsement hasn’t sat well with most people he knows who are closely involved with state Republican politics.
• “Folks who have worked so hard for him and worked so hard for his message sort of felt betrayed because he picked a guy who worked against that message and was against him otherwise in almost every way,” Johnson said.
• In an interview, Michael Biundo, a top adviser to the Gibbons campaign, didn’t strongly contest the new pro-Vance polling that showed Vance jumping out to a lead. But, he said news of the endorsement comes late in the race and could have a hard time breaking through, particularly as other candidates, including Gibbons, try to launch ads and other measures to counteract it.
• “He’s got a lot of questions he has to answer, and that is an anchor on him right now as he tries to take full advantage of the Trump endorsement,” Biundo said.

Washington Examiner: Trump’s Vance endorsement gets mixed reviews, even among supporters
Kate Scanlon
April 24, 2022

• Former President Donald Trump’s endorsement of Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance has been met with mixed reviews among even his most ardent supporters.
• The endorsement sparked criticism from some Republicans in the state who asked Trump to reconsider his choice, arguing in a letter that Vance is a “political chameleon” who called Trump and his supporters “racist” in 2016. In his own remarks at the Saturday rally, Vance offered his full support to Trump, calling him “the best president of my lifetime.”
• But in interviews at Trump’s rally Saturday in Ohio, many attendees who self-identified as Ohio voters and Trump supporters said they were still undecided in the upcoming primary or that they planned to support one of the other candidates, including Josh Mandel or Mike Gibbons.

• But in interviews at Trump’s rally Saturday in Ohio, many attendees who self-identified as Ohio voters and Trump supporters said they were still undecided in the upcoming primary or that they planned to support one of the other candidates, including Josh Mandel or Mike Gibbons.

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Columbus, OH — As a Senate candidate, Silicon Valley J.D. Vance has decried companies that use H-1B visas, but as a venture capitalist, he invested heavily in them. It’s a mode of operating that’s all too familiar for Vance, whose signature move is to say one thing and do the opposite.  

The issue could produce tension between Vance and Trump, who promised to end the program and tightened H-1B visas while in office, and is hosting a rally tomorrow here in Delaware. 

“Silicon Valley Vance made a fortune investing in corporations that undercut Ohio workers and as soon as he became a Senate candidate, changed his tune to further his own ambition,” said Michael Beyer, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party. 

Axios: J.D. Vance’s investments made use of H-1B visas he opposes

Sophia Cai and Dan Primack

April 22, 2022 

• J.D. Vance has spoken out strongly against H-1B visas as a Senate candidate in Ohio, but his history as a venture capitalist tells a different story.
• Around three dozen companies in which Vance-affiliated funds invested, and in which he still has economic interests, have applied for the visas, which often are used by American tech companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers.
• Why it matters: Vance and former President Trump are slated to appear together tomorrow night at a rally in Ohio, where H-1B visas are often used as rhetorical punching bags by candidates seeking to appeal to blue-collar workers.
• Trump tightened H-1B visa eligibility while in office, after having pledged to “end forever” the program on the campaign trail. His recent endorsement of Vance has been controversial among Republicans in Ohio, where Democrats hope to flip a seat in November.
• Background: Vance, who got his start in venture capital with Peter Thiel, in 2017 joined Steve Case’s Revolution to invest in Midwestern startups. Two years later he left Revolution to co-found his own firm in Ohio, called Narya.
• What we’re watching: Thirty-eight companies that received investment from Revolution’s first Rise of the Rest fund and/or Narya have applied for H-1B visas, according to Senate financial disclosures and the Department of Homeland Security database. Among them:
• StockX, a Detroit-based online sneaker marketplace, filed 31 petitions for H1-B visas between 2019 and 2022, for both initial and continuing employment.
• FiscalNote, which owns CQ Roll Call, filed 15 petitions between 2015 and 2021.
• AppHarvest, an indoor tomato grower in Kentucky that’s now publicly traded, filed five petitions in 2021 and 2022. Vance was on AppHarvest’s board of directors until April 2021.
• At a campaign stop in Dayton, Ohio in January, Vance called the H-1B visa “an unholy alliance between government and our biggest corporations.”
• The bottom line: Politicians with professional investing backgrounds often find their rhetoric coming into conflict with their résumé.

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April 22, 2022

Happy Friday, and welcome to “Buckeye Brawl,” a weekly newsletter from the Ohio Democratic Party highlighting the nasty, chaotic and expensive Republican primary for Senate. This out-of-control primary is making conservatives “deeply worried” about the prospects of Republicans losing this seat. 

As the Republican Senate primary continues to sink lower and lower, these GOP candidates are injecting even more nasty personal attacks, more chaos and more money into this race. We’re here to help you keep track of all of it.

‘’Go f**k yourself’: Trump and Don Jr. war with top GOP donor who bought ads opposing his candidate” –Salon headline, 4/22/22

There was a lot of chaos this week, so here’s what you may have missed:

TOTAL WAR. Since Trump’s endorsement, Don Jr. has adopted J.D. Vance’s feuds as his own. At a candidate forum last year, Vance called the pro-Mandel Club For Growth the “Club for Chinese Growth” after the group spent heavily airing Vance’s anti-Trump comments. Now that Trump has endorsed Vance, Trump expected Club for Growth to fall in line. Club for Growth didn’t do any such thing – instead they doubled down on their support for Mandel, and began re-airing the ad Trump asked them to take off the air last year. A spokesperson for the group said they were increasing their buy against Vance. Trump responded, having his assistant text David McIntosh, the president of Club, telling him to “go f**k yourself.” According to a source, Don Jr. then threatened McIntosh, saying he is considering opposing all candidates newly endorsed by the Club for Growth unless they pull the anti-Vance ads and remove McIntosh from the board. It all starts in Ohio, but the nasty infighting here could have nationwide consequences. A Vance ally summed it up nicely: “It’s total war.”

BETRAYAL. The fallout doesn’t stop there, though. Half of the 2016 Trump RNC delegates from Ohio wrote a letter to Trump asking him to reconsider his endorsement of J.D. Vance, warning, “JD Vance has not developed relationships with Republican voters and grassroots leaders that are crucial to win. This endorsement of JD Vance is a betrayal to not only your Ohio supporters but Trump supporters across our great nation!” According to Fox News, the letter is signed by 33 of the total 66 delegates that were designated to represent Trump at the 2016 RNC if he won the Ohio primary. Hard to unite the party when half of your national delegates are jumping ship before the primary! 

RILED UP. The other candidates responded to Trump’s endorsement of Vance – and it has not gone well. Weathervane Jane Timken said, “It has riled up the base. They are not happy. My voters are sticking with me.” Mike Gibbons told NBC News’ Vaughn Hillyard that he thinks Trump made a mistake and that “I don’t think JD is qualified as a conservative.” At a campaign event yesterday with insurrectionist Michael Flynn, Josh Mandel mentioned “never Trumpers” in the Republican Party while avoiding mentioning any of his opponents by name. Then someone in the crowd yelled Vance’s name and Mandel felt compelled to repeat it – attacking J.D. Vance as a Never Trumper. It’s hard to put down the knives when you’ve been using them for so long! 

Thanks for reading along – that’s all for the Buckeye Brawl this week. If you have questions, my email is [email protected]. Have a great weekend! 

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Columbus, OH — With only two days until Trump’s rally, the GOP Ohio U.S. Senate field has descended into even more chaos following Trump’s surprise endorsement of Vance. 

Trump’s endorsement of Vance was expected to be a coronation but if this week has been any indication –  it’s only provoked condemnation. The “We the People Convention,” a national Tea Party group headquartered in Akron, said they would not accept Trump’s endorsement and questioned why Vance would say Trump was “America’s Hitler.” Zawistowski, the president of the group, said, “We were stunned when he would endorse a J.D. Vance who has no connection to us. J.D. Vance was nowhere in Ohio when we were electing Donald Trump twice.” The group is also planning to protest Trump’s rally in Delaware and Zawistowski said that Trump can expect to hear boos when he comes to Delaware County this weekend.

Half of Trump’s 2016 Ohio RNC delegates called Vance’s endorsement a “betrayal” and sent a letter to Trump asking him to reconsider. The letter also called out Vance’s lack of connection to Ohio, saying, “Unlike the other candidates in this race, JD Vance has not developed relationships with Republican voters and grassroots leaders that are crucial to win.” 

And Cincinnati Enquirer columnist Jason Williams lambasted Vance about how poorly his endorsement is going over in Ohio. He said Vance is “the candidate who cares the least about Ohio” and is “the least authentic candidate in the race.” Williams also said, “Many Ohio Republican Party influencers are irate at Trump over his Vance endorsement. They’re quietly working against Vance.”

Trump texted Club For Growth President David McIntosh, expecting him to take down their anti-Vance ads and when they didn’t, had his assistant text McIntosh, saying, “Go f*^% yourself.” Club For Growth Action responded within minutes, saying they are increasing their ad buy in Ohio.  

“Trump’s endorsement hasn’t united the Ohio GOP – it has only created more chaos and division as Republicans have spent the past week destroying each other. With less than two weeks to go, this crowded primary will only get uglier and make it even harder for the GOP to unite behind one of their toxic, out-of-touch millionaires,” said Michael Beyer, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party. 

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